Biography

Prolific "heavy" in American films of the silent and early talkie eras. A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Kohler left home as a teenager, working various jobs while trying to establish a career in vaudeville. During this time, according to his son, actor Fred Kohler Jr., Kohler worked in a mine and lost part of his right hand in a dynamite accident. Eventually he fell in with a touring theatrical company and worked onstage around the U.S. for several years. In his mid-twenties, he ended up in California and found roles in silent films. He quickly found a niche as a villain, by virtue of his imposing size and his fearsome features, typically and most memorably in The Iron Horse (1924). He worked primarily in Westerns, but films of all sorts benefited from his skill at screen nastiness. In a series of silent Paramount Westerns based on Zane Grey novels, Kohler not only played the heavy, but also repeated some of those roles when these films were remade as talkies a decade later. His career lasted without let-up until his sudden death due to a heart attack at 51 in 1938.
- IMDb mini biography by: Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>

Buried in an unmarked grave at Inglewood Memorial Park in Inglewood, CA, A Plot, Lot 1866.

Although he forged a successful film career playing brutal thugs, in person he was known as a gentle, mild-mannered sort. He took a stab at directing in the 1920s but gave it up because he couldn't bear telling people what to do. Having suffered countless violent deaths in his films, his real passing came peacefully, in his sleep, from apparent heart failure.

In Frisco Kid (1935) he played a villain named "The Shanghai Duck" who has a hook for his right hand.

In real life, Kohler had lost part of his right hand in a dynamite explosion in a mining accident in his early years.

Both Fred Kohler and Fred Kohler Jr. appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman (1936).